And take at least two cold showers per day. This is yet another reason you should never take general advice from a doctor. Remember, they’re not particularly intelligent and they’re not scientists, much less engineers, so their reasoning skills are rudimentary at best and their experimental knowledge is nil.
Doctor Explains Why You Shouldn’t Take A Cold Shower To Keep Cool During The Heatwave
In what feels like day 200 of this month’s heatwave, we’re ready to try just about anything in a bid to cool down. And taking a cold shower seems like a good option, doesn’t it? Well, according to a doctor, it’s something you want to avoid.
It’s believed taking a cold shower in hot weather is actually counter productive. This is because when our body is subjected to extreme cold, it tries to regulate our core temperature. One of the ways it does this is by controlling blood flow to the skin. When it is reduced, heat is retained within the body, meaning although initially a cold shower might make you feel cooler for a short period, you’ll actually feel hotter than you did before after a few minutes.
Think about it. Do they also tell you not to go swimming in pools and lakes because you’ll just feel hotter afterwards? How is cold water magically transformed by its journey through the shower tubes in such a manner that it actually has an anti-cooling effect?
I took a cold shower one hour ago. Not only do I still feel much cooler than I did prior to taking it, but I’m not even sweating now.
First of all, if you’re feeling hotter than you did before after a few minutes, then you didn’t take a cold shower, but a lukewarm one at most. A cold shower is a shock to your system that leaves you shivering when you get out. Don’t dry yourself off either, as letting the water evaporate will prolong the cool period.
Second, while you’re still wet, get settled where a fan is blowing on you. This will make the evaporation process even cooler, as will drinking ice water while you are still cool. The colder you get, the longer it lasts.
Third, the longer you can avoid physical activity after you’ve brought your body temperature down, the longer it will take before you being heating up enough to start sweating again.
I take two cold showers a day during heat waves, once in the afternoon and once in the late evening, and I’m quite comfortable even when it’s over 100 degrees. And I strongly suspect that if I were to measure my core temperature over the course of a day, I could easily falsify the doctor’s hypothesis that blood flow to the skin renders cold showers counterproductive.
LET THEORY BE SILENT WHEN DIRECT OBSERVATION GAINSAYS ITS CONCLUSIONS.